Academic Agency and Leadership in Tourism Higher Education

Abstract

This article explores the leadership agency of tourism faculty in higher education and recommends actions to enhance leadership for social change. Based on a review of literature grounded within an agency perspective, a conceptual framework is presented that identifies systemic and individual influences on leadership. Three types of freedom for faculty to engage in leadership behaviors arise:(1) the capacity of the individual to lead; (2) the freedom afforded by the organizational context to lead in accordance with one's capacity to lead; and (3) the social freedom to lead derived from each faculty member's disciplinary and departmental norms and structures.

Virtual reality and situated experiential education: A conceptualization and exploratory trial

“…Understanding and unpacking complex problems grounded in the real world are very challenging tasks in themselves but rendered even more challenging when attempted from the classroom setting or readings. When also considering the roles of universities as thought‐leaders (Dredge & Schott, ) and even critics of society, as for instance designated by the New Zealand Education Amendment Act (Harland, Tidswell, Everett, Hale, & Pickering, ), then the pedagogical merit of SEEE is clearly illustrated.…”

“…These include the opportunity to allow students to virtually experience challenging‐to‐access or dangerous environments (such as working laboratories, commercial premises, remote rainforests, derelict mines, or sites of conflict), places where the presence of students would be disruptive to others due to practical and ethical concerns (such as a class of 100 students visiting a small village of 50 people) or indeed places that no longer exist due to natural disasters or armed conflict. Learning in virtual as opposed to real SEEE can also assist institutions with the management of constrained budgets (Stainfield, Fisher, Ford, & Solem, ), increasing concern about liability issues (Pearson & Beckham, ) and increasing work load pressures on staff (Dredge & Schott, ). Pedagogically, a virtual environment also has a range of desirable features including the deliberate creation of affordances linked to specific learning objectives, the ability to easily record and repeat experiences with or without variations intended to enable deeper learning, and the ability to provide feedback in context.…”

The tourism education futures initiative

“…Efforts encompass initiatives to explore tourism education futures, types of leadership (Dredge & Schott, 2013), and issues of gender, race/ethnicity, and language equity in the tourism academy. Activities such as the development of future conferences and TEFI's organizational planning are also included here.…”

Academic Activism in Tourism Studies: Critical Narratives from Four Researchers

“…Yet others have explicitly built greater links between their research and service-oriented community groups (Baguley & Fullarton, 2013). To date, there has been little attempt to understand the process of how tourism and hospitality scholars engage within the increasingly neoliberal context of tourism studies (see Airy, Tribe, Beckendorff & Xiao, 2015, Dredge & Schott 2013Ayikoru, 2014). This paper represents our call for much-needed joint conversations and collaborative actions to protect academic freedom and encourage greater community engagement We share our professional experiences and personal values that underpin our academic activism in solidarity with tourism-related scholars in the developing and developed countries who are undertaking similar journeys and hope that this paper encourages both current and new generations of upcoming tourism scholars to engage with critical economic, environmental and social issues in the context of tourism studies.…”